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Friday, 8 November 2013

Listography - My Top 5 Life Lessons

The wonderful Kate Takes 5 has brought back to life Listography which is one of my all-time favourite linkys. Kate's new Listography entry is the top 5 lessons she has learned from life. These are mine ....

1. DO IT...

...Whatever it is. If you're too shy or too frightened, get over it and get on with it. Try to enjoy it. If you don't, don't do it again. Never miss an opportunity or an experience that you're afraid to miss because of fear, you will regret it.

Because then you will spend the rest of your life boring people in pubs, parks and on buses with the time you nearly went skydiving/ naked fountain dancing/ got married/ had a baby/ wrote a best-selling novel/ on Strictly Come Dancing/ became prime minister (delete as appropriate). And nobody wants to be that person.

So do it*

*Whilst abiding by all health and safety guidelines, your resident country's current legal requirements and acceptable moral conduct etc ....... (a lot more flexible than you think depending on where you are obvs *looks hard at some countries*)

2. IT WILL ALL COME OUT IN THE WASH...
... And I'm not talking Ribena, which doesn't. It's an old saying I remember my grandma, my mother and her sister deploying at pursed lips moments of resignation about one disgraced family member or another.

I believe (and hope) it to mean: If you make an error, a mistake, a bad judgement in your life, marry a salesmen or embarrass yourself in some other way, people who love you will, eventually, forgive and (almost) forget because they love you.

(Though they will be bringing it up (whatever it was) at every family gathering for the Rest Of Your Life. Obvs.)

3. UNDERESTIMATE NOBODY...
... People are all kinds of amazing and do amazing things all the time regardless of stature, status, sense and style. Or age because kids can do pretty amazing things too, sometimes when you least expect it and often when you most need it. A quick tissue-sodden viewing of the Pride of Britain awards will show you that.

When my father-in-law had a heart attack while grouting our family bathroom, it was my then three-year-old son toddling down the stairs to say Grandpa was poorly and his arms all flopping that raised the alarm.

Me? I was stood around wondering what the distant thump had been. *Tuts at self.* Obviously I panicked leapt into life-saving action immediately.

The Boy might not have won any awards but he is mine and his (now recovered and healthy) Grandpa's pride.

4. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NORMAL ...
In one of the first ever Psychology lectures I attended at college the tutor said one of the main things we had to remember was: "There is no such thing as a normal person."

It was, I'll admit it, a bit of a relief.

People who say they are "normal," usually while sneering that someone else is not, seem quite proud to claim that they're normal. They're not normal though, they're the norm; one of a majority, an average person, a singular part of a faceless mass with no distinguishing features, foibles, traumas or talents united together by the need not to stand out.

And if that's normal, I don't want to be :)

5. WINE ALWAYS HELPS ...
I don't know why it does or how it does. But it just does. Fact.

These are my Top 5 Life Lessons, Read, learn and inwardly digest (particularly the wine) for a happier, if slightly hungover, life.